just watching the clouds…

it’s so hard to believe that i haven’t posted anything since the first week if this month, and december is pretty much gone, now. i’m so glad it went by fast, though. jamie will be home sometime next month, and i will be so relieved and happy to have him back with me everyday. it will take some getting used to, of course. i have lived alone for the past year, after all. and he’s lived in tents with smelly guys *lol* it’ll take both of us some getting used to, i guess.

christmas went pretty well this year. a lot of my family showed up here, which is out of the ordinary. we usually just have our parents over. in addition to my mom and dad, my two aunts and my brother, his wife, and a niece came, and my cousin, his wife, her sister and baby came, as well. i suppose everyone wanted to surround me with family and make sure i was feeling loved and needed. it did make the day more enjoyable, even though i of course was wishing jamie was there. we all talked about him often, because he was on all of our minds. i told my brother how he loves my deviled eggs and always wants the bowl after i’ve filled the eggs because he likes to eat every last bit of the leftover filling out with a piece of loaf bread. my brother was talking about how he couldn’t wait to come see him when he got in and have a steak with him, and my cousin was talking about having a beer with him and having him over for a birthday party in april. my parents told me to wish him a merry christmas and made sure his gifts from them were under the tree before they left.

so 2012 is only a few days away now. i think there are going to be some major changes coming this next year. i can feel it. maybe that’s why people get so excited about new year’s resolutions. they know that every year can bring big changes, so they try to gain some control of the changes by making plans and setting goals. nothing wrong with that, i guess. plans help us get focused on what we want out of life, which is a good thing. best wishes for a wonderful 2012!

Skype is a prime example of something being a blessing and a curse at the same time! As wonderful as it is to hear my hubby’s voice, when it goes to acting up as more soldiers get on to talk to their own families, it is so frustrating and annoying. It starts echoing and dropping the calls and distorting your words and any other sounds it picks up, and your call is done. You can forget about any kind of video, which usually isn’t good in the first place. He can see you, but all you can see is a vague outline of pixilated, dark colors. Last night, he did get to see our Christmas tree and Jake, our dog, and Snookie, our cat, for a bit. So I guess that was pretty nice. But we wouldn’t have been able to do that had it not been very early in the morning over there. When people start rising and getting on their laptops to check Facebook, that’s when the lagging and dropped Skype calls start. So it’s over, and you never get to say your goodbyes.

Glad we can skype some again now, though. He had been able to Skype at the first camp he went to over there, but at this second base, they weren’t offered the option to buy their own internet, so all he could do was go to the internet café, which he avoided most of the time. And 15 minute phone calls were getting old. What happens on a 15 minute phone call? one of two things: you sit there thinking, ‘Crap, I only have 15 minutes. What did I want to tell him?’ OR you have something really important to talk about, and in the middle of the discussion, he says, ‘Hey, we’re at 14 minutes. I gotta go.’

So now he has Internet again, and I can talk to him for more than 14 and a half minutes :o) well, at least before everyone else starts getting on. I will be so glad when he’s stateside again and can call me on his cell phone.

This week, I decided to try the Shakeology 3-day Cleanse. It is supposed to remove toxins and gunk built up in your system, which I needed after splurging quite a lot over Thanksgiving. I hadn’t gained weight over the holiday, but I definitely didn’t feel my best. So basically, you drink a shake for breakfast, one for lunch, one for a snack, and eat a salad with grilled chicken (or other white protein) and low-fat dressing for supper. You can also have 1-2 pieces of fruit and green tea for snacks. I changed my plan just a bit. You’re supposed to mix your Shakeology with water for the three days, but I used almond milk instead, because #1, mixing it with water sounds really unappealing to me, and #2, I felt like I needed more calories than the 800 or so this cleanse has you down to. That’s just not healthy, in my opinion, even if it is only for 3 days. The other change I made was that I had decided that if I felt truly hungry, I’d eat extra fruit.

Day 1:
Today went pretty well. I had all three shakes plus two pieces of fruit, a delicious honey crisp apple and a d’anjou pear. I baked my chicken tonight and had a big salad with zesty Italian vinaigrette. I taught a Zumba class around 5 p.m., and I didn’t feel the least bit weak. By the time I went to bed, which was pretty late, I felt hungry enough that my tummy was growling again, so I ate ½ cup of mandarin oranges and went back to bed. I felt really…I don’t even know how to describe it. Not bloated and puffy. I know that probably isn’t clear, but it’s the only way I can describe it.

Day 2:
I have felt hungrier today. I had two shakes, one for breakfast and one for lunch, a navel orange, and a red d‘Anjou pear. I didn’t want the shake after school, so I ate my salad with chicken before going to my second job. I had a low fat Asian sesame dressing that was soooo delicious. When I got home from my night class, my 3rd shake still didn’t appeal to me, so I had a Mariani Sesame Honey Bar, which is an all natural seed, nut, raisin, and honey bar that I found on my last shopping trip to WalMart. I’d had one over Thanksgiving holiday week and thought that it was really bland, but eating it after being on this cleanse and not having much sugar and such, it tasted so delicious and sweet tonight! Yum!

Day 3:
I had two shakes, a honey crisp apple, and a d’anjou pear earlier today. I ate my chicken salad with low fat thousand island dressing this evening. I am sipping on coffee and might have some green tea later. I will probably have my third shake before bed. Sticking with the cleanse was more difficult today. It’s been a bit of a mental struggle. I didn’t have my morning shake right off, so it was about 9 a.m. before I had it, so I was very hungry by the time I drank it, and all I could think about was eating something solid instead. The shake satisfied me, though, but it was a little later than usual that I had my second shake, too. Also, I am one of those people that gets really sick of a food if I eat it for more than two meals in a row, so eating the same things with only little variations over the past three days has not been easy. Now, to be fair to the cleanse, I could have chosen to eat different white-meat protein sources, which would have changed things up a good bit, but I was definitely going for easy by batch cooking three days’ worth of chicken during my busy work week. I also feel a bit weaker today. I think I could probably teach Zumba tonight if I had to, but I’d struggle. Ended up drinking my last shake before bed, and it was very satisfying. I felt full and comfortable and not deprived.

Final Impressions:
For my measurements, I lost ½ inch from my waist, and 1 inch from my hips from when I measured on Wednesday. I also lost 2 lbs. So that comes down to 18.41% bodyfat, which is the lowest I’ve been in YEARS! Yes, I did a little dance :o) In fact, in all the years that I have been fitness-conscious and health-knowledgeable, I have never even seen this number!!! I am sure sometime in high school when I was in a size 0 jeans, I was down below this body fat, but I definitely wasn’t doing it the healthy way back then, so it doesn’t count! :oD Also, I didn’t lose muscle (I actually gained over a lb in muscle!), so if losing some of your lean body mass is a concern when doing a cleanse, I can at least say from my experience that Shakeology didn’t let me down there, either. I figured out my body fat by using this calculator:

Want to try it? You can get Shakeology through me by going to myshakeology.com/cshows. You will also be a part of my Beachbody team, where I will coach you for free, offering advice, fitness and health info, and whatever level of motivation and support you need from me. The best part about Shakeology as a product is that there is a 30-day empty bag-no questions asked-money-back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with it. It’s definitely worth a try. If you read back through my blog, I was pretty skeptical about it. In fact, my Beachbody coach had talked to me about it numerous times before I finally tried it. But I can say with all honesty that I have really liked the results I’ve gotten with it. I feel better, and I look better. That is worth the money to me. It isn’t the cheapest meal replacement out there, but it is the healthiest. It’s also the most filling that I’ve tried, and I’ve done things like SlimFast in the past that left me hungry all the time. Shakeology fills me up when I have it for lunch. I pay less than a dollar more per day than I was when I bought frozen low calorie dinners and fruit or yogurt for lunch, and I’m just as satisfied, if not more so. I am definitely more satisfied with what Shakeology has done for my body – made me slimmer by body fat reduction and smaller measurements, given me more energy throughout the day, and helped me stop obsessing about food so much. If you have more questions, just email me (csshows@yahoo.com) or message me on Facebook.